Wild Things

By Liz Boysha

Sometime in the near future, four teens are living through every day dystopia, perpetuated by ecological collapse and mass extinction. Each has a unique connection to nature; a connection which will prove useful as they find themselves embroiled in fossil fuel conspiracies and corporate corruption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Liz Boysha
• Release date: Dec 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223105961

Liz Boysha

Liz is an artist, ecologist, and occasional author. She enjoys being alone or spending time with goats.

Book preview

Author’s Note

This book deals with mature themes including:

Climate Change and Mass Extinction

Police Brutality

LGBT+ and Sexuality

Poverty and Crime

Rape/Sexual Assault

Sex Trafficking

Occasional cursing

None of these were particularly new topics when I was a young adult, and I can’t imagine things have gotten any better in the meantime.

If this book is banned in Florida, my life goals will be complete.

For more information about the very real impending ecological disasters described in this fictional story, please read the appendix.

Prologue: A Man Called Wolf

Listen: Wolf had been drinking, and he was driving. That is unacceptable, he knows. There is no excuse. There might’ve been other substances involved, too, he doesn’t know if they’d yet worked their way out of his system, you know? He was driving away from a week-long bender at an old friend, a new stranger’s house; the constant stream of visitors in and out, each on different drugs and in different stages of desperation.

Well. He wasn’t in good shape.

Wolf wasn’t seeing much, because it was black as black and he was driving well away from that city, its Inner District lights just a ghost on the horizon behind him. His headlights were nothing but pinpricks swallowed up by the asphalt.

So even if he was drunk, or high, there probably wasn’t anything he could have done to stop that deer from leaping straight in front of his truck. All he sees, all he could possibly have seen is a flash of white as he hits it, then red as his face abruptly decelerates into the steering wheel.

His nose takes all the force.

Wolf fuzzes out a bit there, lost in the pain and blood and haze of intoxicants, but somehow, he pulls that truck to a stop after spinning a full 180, facing the wrong way down the highway, headlights pointed straight at that dead deer in the road. Even with his eyes fogged from pain, he can see it is dead. Its head was ripped nearly clean off.

Lucky, though, the truck is alright: bumper dented, windshield cracked, but the engine is still running.

Wolf feels obligated to drag the deer off the road, thinking about scavengers and the unlikely chances of another vehicle racing down the highway as they are trying to enjoy the meal. He steps out of the truck, leaving the door open with the lights and the ding ding alarm singing at him as he stumbles over.

When he approaches, he can see the deer’s abdomen rippling, like something is squirming inside, and his stomach churns along with it. Steeling himself, Wolf grabs its front legs and drags the corpse towards the shoulder of the road. It is heavier than he was expecting, and as he pulls, the deer’s head flops back, tongue sticking out, dragging along behind it by a strip of sinew. He does not notice that the convulsing within the deer grows stronger. He just pulls, again and again, and as soon as he gets to the side of the road something shoots out the other end.

That is when Wolf drops the deer and pukes, again and again, until he is stone cold sober, staring at a cloudy amniotic sac that had just been birthed onto the road by a dead deer.

He faints when he sees the hand, five perfect fingers pressed up against the translucent membrane. He lands pretty much face first, cutting his eyebrow on gravel. He is not out for long; before he is even aware, he is on his knees, tearing into the amniotic sac with his bare hands. Pulling out a fully formed human baby.

The amniotic fluid falls away from the newborn in a gush, and the cold air shocks it into a long, ear-shattering scream. The sound of it is mind-numbing, and Wolf sits frozen, staring at the shrieking thing before him, growing cold in the night air. He is in shock and bleeding from his face.

His eyes trail the umbilical cord, still attached to a meaty looking placenta hanging half out of the deer. He slips off his hoodie and wraps infant and placenta both in it, securing the package back to his truck where it is still warm. He keeps a knife in the center console, as well as a small first aid kit, both of which prove useful now. He uses the string from the hoodie to tie off the umbilical cord, which has ceased its weak pulsing. The tissue is slick and tougher than he expects, and the newborn’s screams leave him worried it can feel him cutting through it.

Sitting there, staring at what he now realizes is a newborn baby girl, her face all red and screaming under the dim overhead lights and the ding ding alarm still going off, this is the first time Wolf thinks, What the fuck?

It has been a long week.

The baby starts to quiet down, probably due to sheer exhaustion, as Wolf cleans it up and dries it off, then wraps it back up in the hoodie. She seems to like being wrapped up like that, he notices, snuggled up close like a cocoon. Wolf examines his own face in the tiny overhead mirror, his nose swollen and a cut above his eyebrow bleeding too much for its size, as head wounds tend to do. He staunches the nasal flow with gauze and roughly applies the sticky butterfly tape to close the gash on his head. All the while the newborn sits on his lap, silent now, staring up at his mangled face with swollen, unfocused grey eyes.

Urgent needs taken care of, Wolf now has time to think: What do you do? When you’re 17, injured, holding a baby what just came out of a dead deer, dead because of you, by the way? He could take the baby to Tia’s house, which is his house now, he supposes. Tia Elena, his mother’s sister, was just a couple weeks gone now. This explains Wolf’s past week, actually: the weight of all those months caring for her, watching her die, talking to doctors and lawyers and funeral directors. Wolf has not set foot in that house since watching her leave it in a body bag.

Problem is, that house is a good six hours away by highway, and the baby is here, grunting and snuffling around like it is hungry. Wolf looks out his windshield at the dead deer, oozing scarlet into gravel, and he wonders what the baby would have been eating if he hadn’t come along to kill it. Would she have nursed from the deer? Would the deer have laid there with it for weeks, months, years so it could grow so slow?

Wolf realizes he has to drive back to the town he has just left, where it is still late and past Off Hours, so he has to drive all the way through to the Inner District, where the streets are still lit and the occasional 24-hour store still open. He keeps the newborn buckled in the passenger seat next to him as he drives. He can hear his heart thumping in his chest the entire way, his nerves jangled and shot to hell.

Forgive him, Wolf does not know much about babies. He is seventeen years old, and the only diapers he has changed before were his Tia’s, those last couple weeks when it got really bad. He parks his truck in a dark corner of the pharmacy parking lot and leaves the newborn alone in the passenger seat as he browses through formula and diapers. There are too many options for both: liquids and powders and concentrates and pre-mixed; plain and sensitive and soy and hypoallergenic; bottles of all sorts of shapes and sizes. The diapers are easier once he realizes they are labelled: N for Newborn. Wolf even buys a set of tiny pajamas, also size N, grey fleece, dotted with tiny yellow ducklings.

Signs on the shelves warn customers about a formula shortage: Limit: 2 per customer. The cashier reminds Wolf of it too, even though he is only carrying two containers: newborn, ready-to-serve. Wolf winces under the harsh lighting, certain the cashier’s scowl has something to do with the state of his face. There is still dried blood in his scruffy beard, and there is nothing to be done about the swollen nose. As soon as he pulls out cash, however, the cashier breaks out into a grin.

The wife threw a hair dryer at my head, when our oldest was a week old, he chuckles. Won’t ever forget to stop on the way home again. Wolf nods and pays quickly, the cost of the formula an unpleasant shock, and hurries out of the store, across the parking lot.

Wolf’s truck is hardly soundproof, and he can hear screaming as he approaches, but as soon as he picks up the bundle it seems to calm down, if only just a little. He struggles to fill a bottle one-handed, to work the nipple into the toothless gaping mouth of the newborn. It takes coaxing, but soon she is happily sucking down the sticky formula. He had filled the bottle, assuming she would be hungry, but she drinks less than an ounce before her eyes start to blink closed in a satiated slumber. He will have to throw the rest out.

The baby stays asleep as he unwraps the hoodie, which is now covered in black, sticky poop in addition to the remaining deer gore. Wolf cleans it off as best as he can with wipes, then dresses her; the diaper and pajamas are both a little too big, despite the N-size. He wraps her up again - in a clean shirt, since all his clothes are in the back seat - and starts the drive home.  The baby sleeps quietly in the passenger seat the entire time, waking only once for feeding and changing, then she is right back asleep.

Wolf and the baby, whom he names Elena, live at his, Tia’s, house for two months, while he learns about burping and diaper rash and sleepless nights and cradle cap and poop (so much poop). Then he sells the house, his childhood home, and uses some of the cash to buy an electric camper van, as well as a car seat suitable for infants. They like to be on the road; the Van can always lull baby Elena to sleep.

Chapter 1:

Wolf tells Elena a lot of stories about her absent mother over the years, but the first time she believes him is when she is thirteen, and he tells her about the deer.

Part of it is his eyes, which Elena finds stunning and therefore spends an inordinate amount of time staring at: light brown with flecks of gold, like his namesake’s, and always darting around. Even when he is driving, he’ll risk glances off the road, over to the schoolwork or a watercolor Elena is hunched over in the passenger seat. They cross over her face, to the side mirror, the rearview mirror, back to the road. Always moving, always watching out.

But when he tells the deer story, his eyes never leave the road. Not even once.

Part of it is also because of something that had happened many years before; it is one of Elena’s earliest memories. They had stopped at a campground off a highway somewhere in Appalachia. Wolf was distracted by the septic pump, while an only recently mobile Elena examined the forest. She had learned to walk so late; her specific developmental delay left Wolf with a false sense of security, the erroneous belief she would not, could not wander off.

The forest was a beautiful and enticing place, trees shrouded in fog, into which she immediately wandered. She still vividly remembers the scent of mist and pine; the different birds, each singing their own tune; trees whispering in the wind; a cricket somewhere chirping. To Elena, it sounded like the forest was calling her name.

She kept walking, deeper and deeper into the woods, until she came upon a clearing, brightly lit compared to the shade of the forest. There she found a family of deer grazing: two does, two fawns, a stag with velvety antlers. They froze and so did Elena, staring at each other, time standing still. Then a sweet smell in the wind, and the tension broke, and the deer returned to grazing. The fawns were the same size as the girl, and they bounced and played for several minutes before, overcome by sudden exhaustion, she laid down with them in a warm beam of sunlight.

They were awoken by the sound of Wolf, calling, desperate, panicked. The deer fled, springing off on tight, thin legs; and Elena burst into tears, incomprehensibly lonely.

The deer tale is also the last story Wolf ever tells about Elena’s birth, further cementing her belief in it. Now that she is old enough to wander off at rest stops without causing a panic, she takes every opportunity to look for more deer, but has thus far been unsuccessful. They are nearly extinct, according to the news. Like most animals.

Elena’s initial delay in walking was largely a consequence of growing up in the Van; despite young Wolf’s best efforts, there is never enough room in a van for a toddler to sufficiently stretch their legs. The Van is a quaint little vehicle, with solar panels lining the roof and a two-burner electric mini-stove for cooking. There is a table and bench that folds into a bed if needed, which is never, because it is just the two of them. Wolf sleeps in a bunk over the front, and Elena takes a mattress in the back, partitioned off by a heavy velvet green curtain. It would make her room unbearably dark if not for the moth holes scattered throughout, letting in little stars of light from the main room. There is a closet of a bathroom with a sit-down shower that pumps sun-warmed recycled grey water into a weak overhead spray, and a chemical toilet that gets pumped out at campgrounds.

There are no windows in the back of the Van, just the windshield and two front door windows. The outside panels are solid white, designed for obscurity. From the outside, it looks like a regular transport vehicle.

Theirs is one of the few private vehicles left on the roads. Officially, Wolf is an independent agent, transportation class. He does private deliveries, special cargo, long-haul pet transport: the kinds of things the wealthy cannot trust with the Federated Postal Service. In reality, he is a smuggler, and for the longest time Elena was not allowed to ask what was hidden in various nooks and storage areas around the Van. Wolf does not know that she learned how to pick the locks he uses to secure them when she was nine.

It is nothing exciting like drugs or exotic seeds. Wolf deals in electronics: old cell phones with cracked screens and bloated lithium batteries; laptops missing their hard drives; children’s toys with tiny midi-speakers and LCD screens. They are taken illegally from landfills by junkrats who sell them to Wolf for cheap; then he illegally smuggles them to often-armed, always-unmarked warehouses in the cities, where they will be illegally refurbished for the black market. Those untraceable electronics are high demand goods for hackers and criminals.

And Wolf just carries them back and forth in his little Van.

Never mind, it keeps food on the table. He chooses to smuggle these goods, these harmless goods with little value, to keep Elena safe. She is an illegal child: unregistered, unlicensed, unschooled, except for the worksheets Wolf makes her fill out on her tablet while he drives.

Elena does not enjoy the worksheets; she really does not enjoy math. She does enjoy reading, sometimes, and she especially enjoys listening to Wolf’s audiobooks. They come on shiny plastic disks with such little storage that the books have to be broken up into five, six, sometimes over a dozen parts. Sometimes a disk is absent, and they miss entire chapters. With all the contraband he smuggles, Elena wonders why Wolf does not find something better than an ancient Discman for listening to books.

But mostly, Elena enjoys colors, blurring in the landscape as they speed past. She enjoys lines, like the hard white ones contrasting on the road; the colorful ones lighting the dashboard; the sleek curves of the synthetic microplush bucket seats they sit in for 6-8 hours a day. Shadows, darkening under Wolf’s eyes